Living the Non-Binary Life

33.) Forgiveness

Nobody ever talks about how complex forgiveness actually is.

When trauma has shaped who you are as a person, the way you process things and feel about them, how do you let it go? How do you think of the people that caused it without all that pain and betrayal?

They made me feel so small and unimportant, so useless and like such a waste that I stopped eating and showering, I stopped washing my clothes and brushing my hair. I didn't feel like I deserved to care for myself.

Once I realized how far it got, I started doing the bare minimum in order to look like I was still a functional person. I couldn't walk around looking so weak, everything about me an obvious sign of emotional distress. My family started picking on me for not functioning, so I made it look like I was on a physical level.

I guess I had to balance my dysfunction out somehow, so I redirected it toward my emotions. I killed two birds with one stone. I was functioning physically but dead enough emotionally to not care if they started throwing hurtful situations at me.

Just thinking about it is really painful, and extremely difficult for me to not fall back into.

Ultimately, I keep asking myself the same questions. Would they regret what they did to me if they knew? Do they know and just not care? What if they know and they're proud? What if it only spurred them on further?

I'm pretty sure that it's these questions that are keeping me from forgiveness. Only one of my siblings has apologized to me, but that's all mixed up with trauma still. He's said to me that he's proud of me for turning out so successful. He's said that he can't believe it after everything I went through. Then he apologized, over and over again. He admitted that they were horrible, and he gave me the credit that I deserve. But he had this way about him, this laugh, this tone of voice, these faces, and if I notice them in any other person I still get triggered.

My sister, I really hope she doesn't comprehend what they truly did to me, because she's proud of it. She says that they made me a stronger person. She treated me like her own child for the first part of my life, but eventually that stopped once I started developing a personality. Someone who was like a mother to me while I was young has turned into a deep trauma. It's her laughter that I can hear the loudest, her pointing fingers that I can see the clearest, her names and trash talk that I can hear the most coming up the stairs. Her taunts haunt me still, mocking my pain, laughing at my tears. To this day, she is proud of all of that and says that I don't deserve to hold any resentment toward her. She gave up her childhood to raise me, but is proud of the fact that she bullied me out of mine.

My other brother...I don't think he understands anything. He simply took joy in bullying me. He enjoyed physically hurting me. Instead of hurting me for me, he was hurting me for him. My older siblings always hurt me just to see my reactions, just to hold them against me, but my other brother always did it to feel bigger. I don't know how to explain it.

A new brother showed up recently, an estranged brother. He's taken to calling me the same names that the last brother did, in the same tone of voice. It hurts, every time, but I always wonder if he would've taken part in the other bullying. The bullying that dehumanized me. The bullying that, in one way or another, killed me. I like to think he wouldn't have, but a part of me is sure he would've. He wouldn't have known any different. Nobody saw a problem with it, so he wouldn't have either.

My mom would talk shit about me on the phone. Her favorite past time was fabricating things about me, or talking about things that my siblings fabricated. Even though she's seen them in action, she still always believed them. Because of them, I was a liar. I was a manipulative, impulsive, greedy thief or cheat or whatever they needed me to be, whatever they wanted me to be. I was never myself. I was never the real me to her, and she loved talking about the lies. She loved believing them.

How do I forgive them all? How do I let it all go? The memories, the triggers, the pain? Do I rationalize why they did it? Or do I just cut them off and consider that enough?

I know that forgiveness isn't about excusing them, but about personally letting myself let it go enough so that I'm not so negative about it. I just have no idea where or how to start. There's so much to go through with so many people.

Presently I'm sort of speaking with my mom again. I'll probably never trust her, but at least I got to say some of the things that I've been thinking and wondering throughout my life.

My brother also wants to pay for my tattoo that's scheduled a couple of days from now, and the meaning is extremely important to me, so maybe that's his idea of a truce or an apology. Plus my oldest brother already apologized to me. The only person who hasn't really progressed with me is my sister, and that kind of hurts. But it's okay. I just hope that her kids, that all of my siblings kids, turn out okay. I hope that they don't have to go through as much useless suffering as I did.

Above all, I wish them all luck. My two older siblings are hopefully still in recovery, and my mom is still hopefully not drinking anymore. I hope that they all start to remember what happiness is like.

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Be true, stay you ❤❤

~Day Dreamer~